Maybe I AM crazy, but it seems so obvious to me. In any case, after the “response” (read: 10-page emails ranting at me about how I’m an idiot) I got from yesterday’s post on that exact question, I decided to dedicate this week’s podcast to it.

And, specifically, how I plan to not just survive but THRIVE through all of this.

“Not only do I remember the Grid I was founding member #[xxx]. Greatest waste of money ever. Recently I got an email from them announcing there next release and give the chance to upgrade to lifetime membership for only 96.

Out of curiosity I clicked the link which opened a page with a video of the latest features and awesomeness The Grid was going to be introducing. The wise people from The Grid had provided a comments section under the video, no doubt to allow happy current members of The Grid say great things about it and help convince others to jump on board and hand over money.”

What happened was anything but that. Comment after comment of users who had paid their membership and a couple of years later still hadn’t a working version of The Grid, it ran into the hundreds of comments.”

My favorite was from one eagled eyed user who had spotted they were using Wista for this wonderful piece of promotion! Hahaha they couldn’t even manage to build it within their own system and worse they couldn’t seem to code it themselves.”

Man, if I could take you back just a few years…

Bahahaha.

Show you all the comments.

Developers freakin’ out about this thing.

It was the “end of web development”

Blah, blah, blah.

Lol. I tried to tell them all.

It’s like a lot of what you see these days. Slap “AI” or “machine learning” onto any ol’ hunka junk and people lose their minds. But, a lot of this stuff is just crap. Charlatans riding a fad, not actually interested in AI.

That said… none of this means AI won’t get there someday.

Probably will.

Point is, it’s NOT the present.

Or, even the immediate future.

And, there’s so much opportunity NOW.

Don’t worry so much about what’s gonna happen 10 years from now. Take advantage of this coding thing now. Jump on the opportunities now. Build the life you want for yourself now.

And, we’ll figure out what to do about the secks-bo– er, I mean robots later.

Anyhoo, if you want a speed-boost, I’ve got an entire library of coding courses to teach you this stuff and help you learn it faster. So, you can take advantage of the opportunities in front of you right now.

“Will robots replace developers? Is learning to code a waste of time?”

Let me tell you a story.

You remember The Grid?

It was this thing that came out a few years back. The big hoopla was is it was using AI to build you a website. These days, you add AI or “machine learning” to anything and everybody starts getting a big har– well, you know.

And, this thing was going to obsolete developers.

I got asked this all the time.

They ran a massive Facebook ad campaign.

Everywhere you looked, their ad popped up.

And, it had a lot of devs freaked out.

Well, it’s been a few years now. The Grid is still around. Maybe even doing well. But, it’s not that big of thing. And, us devs haven’t been thrown in the scrap heap. In fact, there probably hasn’t been a better time to be a dev.

There’s more opportunity than ever.

So, meh.

Call me Doubting John, but I’m gonna have to see it to believe it when it comes to AI and programming. I’m sure it’ll happen someday. But, I don’t think it’s any time soon. In the meantime, there’s still a ton of opportunity.

But, don’t get so caught up in worrying about the future…

That you miss the opportunities in the present.

Anyhoo, if you wanna speed up your learning curve and get in before the robots take over the world and turn us all into batteries, give my library of coding courses a whirl. PHP, OOP, form-building, Upwork and a whole lot more.

Some robot with the face of Brad Pitt and the abs of John Morr– I mean… Channing Tatum. You’ll do it.

But alas my freaky friends…

We have a looooong way to go before we get there.

Most of the humanoid robots you see right now can’t take two steps without falling on their face… and look more like some Alien bastard child than Jessica Alba or Bradley Cooper mechanized.

So, lots of AI-ing and machine learning to do yet.

Sorry.

But, on a serious note… AI is one of those hottest segments in our industry right now. In fact, for the dreamers in the crowd, it’s the area of tech where you can still make a splash. There’s still so much to learn and do…

If you make a contribution…

You could go down as one of the godfathers/mothers of AI.

It could be a nameplate with your name some dude is looking at as he gets down with his little freak-bot. (Technically, that’d be a good thing… even though, it’s kind of a disturbing thought.)

Oh and it’s not some super-advanced thing you can’t learn. You can actually learn it right here. Funny. This dude actually spent 9 years at Amazon and IMDb working on this kind of stuff and can teach it to you. Big words I don’t know like K-Means Clustering, Bayesian Methods, Support Vector Machines, K-Nearest Neighbor and whatnot.